Three members of Maine’s congressional delegation are expressing “serious reservations and significant concerns” to President Obama about whether he could designate a swath of Maine’s North Woods as a national monument.

In a letter sent Friday to Obama, U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, as well as U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin of the 2nd District, outlined their concerns about reports that the administration is considering a monument designation for more than 100,000 acres of forestland in the Katahdin region. A national monument is significantly less than the national park sought by the Quimby family, which owns the land, but is sometimes a precursor to eventual creation of a national park on land.

Opposition to a national park is seen on a sign on a road leading into Millinocket in August. Reaction to the national park proposal has been mixed.
The Associated Press

“While we acknowledge the right of private land owners to donate their land, we have serious concerns about the executive branch using its power to unilaterally designate a national monument in our state,” the three wrote. “Mainers have a long and proud history of private land ownership, independence, and local control, and do not take lightly any forced action by the federal government to increase its footprint in our state.”

But representatives for the landowner said they were actually encouraged by the letter because it also outlined potential conditions the Obama administration should include in any monument designation.

“We see this as a next step toward real negotiations that hopefully could involve both the delegation and, if they’re interested, the (Obama) administration,” said David Farmer, a spokesman for Elliotsville Plantation Inc., the foundation that owns the land and wants to donate it for a national park..

While national parks and recreation areas must be approved by Congress, federal law allows presidents to create national monuments through executive orders in order to protect “objects of historic or scientific interest.” There are more than 100 national monuments nationwide, and Obama has used his authority to create or expand roughly 20 monuments.

Elliotsville Plantation Inc. has offered to donate roughly 70,000 acres of land near Baxter State Park to the federal government and create a $40 million endowment in order to create a North Woods national park. The nonprofit was founded by conservationist and landowner Roxanne Quimby, co-founder of the Burt’s Bees product line. But the park proposal has encountered staunch opposition from some community leaders in the Millinocket area even as others predict a park could help revive the region’s struggling economy.

King, Collins and Poliquin acknowledge that division in their letter. While local chambers of commerce and 60 percent of Mainers in recent polls support the park proposal, more than 70 percent of voters in two local towns recently opposed the park, as do 225 Maine businesses, the trio wrote.

“We cannot underscore enough the importance of bringing new economic development to this severely economically depressed region of Maine,” wrote the three. “A national monument designation, however, would likely antagonize already divided local communities.”

But the delegation members also outlined nine “conditions” that the Obama administration should consider if it went forward with a designation. Those conditions include ensuring that traditional recreational activities – including hunting, fishing, camping and use of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles – as well as forest management continue on the land. They also stated that any monument designation “must respect private property rights and ensure the federal government will never take any private land in the area by eminent domain.”

Lucas St. Clair, the president of Elliotsville Plantation and Roxanne Quimby’s son, said the conditions “are consistent with the feedback that we’ve received through hundreds of meetings in the Katahdin region, and we believe that they can be achieved.”

“With this list, the delegation is saying that they are open to discussing, in detail, the conditions that could earn their support and make the proposal stronger,” St. Clair said in a statement. “And they have sent a signal to the president about the elements that they would want to see if he decided to use his authority to create a national monument. This begins us along the path of real negotiations.”

The fourth of member of Maine’s congressional delegation, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of the 1st District, supports the national park proposal and said she was encouraged “the conversation has gone to the next level by outlining a possible roadmap to a monument designation.”

“A National Monument or Park in the North Woods would bring much-needed economic development to Northern Maine as it faces major economic challenges,” Pingree said in a statement. “I continue to believe a monument or park would greatly benefit the state by bringing in thousands of visitors and creating hundreds of jobs for the region. And several polls also now show that most people across the state support the project.”

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FreeMaine

Thousands of york and cumberland county people coming up to this area stating they now have a “right” to be here because all that land is public property!

What a freekin nightmare!

Donald Christie Jr

FreeMaine, those “thousands” of York and Cumberland County “people” you disparage have as much “right” to visit your area as you do to enjoy the beaches and rocky coast of their counties — in fact, just as much right as you AND they have to visit, well, just about anywhere in these United States!

nzzkw

We don’t have a right to be on your private property and vice versa. Quimby is trying to eliminate private property rights for a wilderness eco utopia taking over inholders and extending far beyond her land.

duxndrakes

Hey, Southerm Maine ……..I have a message for you: “Go pound sand” ……….Leave this part of the state to the people who live and work here. We don’t need you to come up here and screw it up, like you did with everything else you touch.

harveyr1

I’m from Southern Maine. Have lived here nearly my entire life and I agree with you. Keep the Feds out of Maine.

EABeem

Okay, but can we stop paying your bills with our tax dollars?

nzzkw

You aren’t paying your bills. We are paying for both your redistribution and to fight your abusive attacks on private property rights.

EABeem

I believe you will find that the southern Maine economy and southern Maine taxpayers subsidize northern Maine, which is a high receiving area. Also, not sure where anyone got the idea that people who live near the proposed park will get to vote on it. That’s not how national parks are created. There is no future for the North Woods other than preservation and recreation. Short-sighted people opposed Baxter State Park, Acadia National Park and the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, too. You just have to ignore the naysayers and move ahead.

msscv

You are not paying our bills . You are insulting. You have no right to impose Federal control on us. There is no future for rural Maine as long as coercive eco-utopians like Beem and Quimby are allowed to progressively impose more and more controls, prohibitions, and acquisition attacking private property rights.

EABeem

You seem to be the one who doesn’t believe in private property rights. Roxanne Quimby doesn’t have the right to give her land to the federal government as a national park? You want local folks to tell her what she can do with her land? And as for paying your bills, just as an example, Millinocket paid $1.6 million of its $4.5 million school budget and the rest of the state paid $ 2.9 million of it. If you don ‘t understand that southern Maine subsidizes northern Maine you haven’t been paying attention.

Connie Hoffman

Agree. Silly, however, to say how one area subsidized exclusively by another. People pay taxes and the land itself is Maine to most people, which is invaluable. Radical thinking about private land ownership is way out of my reality and the federal land which is organized as a National Park, available for all to enjoy and to preserve for the future is stellar in my mind.

go2goal

If we waited for locals to support creating Yellowstone National Park, all the bison, elk, and grizzly bears would be gone from the area and we’d still be without that park!

THINK! At our rate of growing people and tearing down forests, all of our large land mammals will be extinct in North America within 50 years! Every large land mammal, except humans, have a population decline of greater than 50% in just the last 100 years alone. Do we really want to wipe out everything like we wiped out the Caribou in Maine and the Northeast?

With all of our still open forest land, Maine has one of the lowest portions of public land among any of the lower 48 states. We are a state with way-way to much private land…..leaving small patches of land for the general public. At this rate, the next generation is going to have nothing to enjoy – nothing!

The rich and the corporations and their political pawns (Collins, King, and Poliquin) don’t want the public to have anything.

A new national park with Quimby’s gift is a natural. What is wrong with the common Maine people in the north country – why are you defending the rich billionaire land owners and their private holdings?

workingmansdem

“We are a state with way to much private land..” Yup, that sums up your thought process. You have no clue that most of Maine is open to use by you and your ilk because private landowners overwhelmingly generously allow it.

harveyr1

“If we waited for locals to support creating Yellowstone National Park, all the bison, elk, and grizzly bears would be gone from the area”

Why? Did they only stay for the park?

“Maine has one of the lowest portions of public land among any of the lower 48 states.”
And we like it that way. The government shouldn’t own property it doesn’t need. If you’re interested in preserving a parcel of land, contact a land preservation organization and search for donors. At the pace that the federal government is designating National Parks and Monuments, eventually, there will be no land left to own privately.

Greenville

You failed to mention that the Bear population is increasing. You failed to mention there are more Deer in Maine and the United States than there have ever mention. You fail to mention that those North Maine Woods have 90 percent of the Countries wild Brook Trout population. You fail to mention the MILLIONS of acres of the North Woods protected via conservation Easement, such as most of Moosehead, Nahmakanta unit, Allagash Wilderness Waterway, West Branch Easement, Katahdin Forest ate Easement, Baxter State Park, Appalachian Trail, Maine Public reserved lands. Which begs the question, Are you entirely misinformed ? or, Deliberately vomiting farcical untruths ?

HCAROLA

For the life of me I cannot understand how anyone can watch their region, county, town die little by little, piece by piece as OUTSIDE multinational corporations screw with them and wreck their lives & livelihoods. It’s like a depressing Springsteen song. Does anyone actually think that the mills are coming back? Hello! They’re NOT! Does anyone actually think that the clock will turn back and small-time lumber operations will come back? It WON’T! Wake up, folks: the past is PAST. And, yeah all those Mainers in Ellsworth, Trenton, Lamoine & MDI really have it hard living w/ Acadia National Park as a neighbor. There’s NOT A ONE there who’d trade his/her property values with those of somebody in Millinocket, EM or Medway. But go ahead folks, keep on opposing “the Feds” but be sure to keep your tinfoil hats tied on tightly as you scan the skies for those pesky “black helicopters” up there in Mainesissippi as your local economy continues to tank and your young people move away.

harveyr1

Bar Harbor was a thriving area long before Acadia NP was created. Acadia was not responsible for the visitors, Bar Harbor was. Bar Harbor was comparable to Newport RI, where the richest of the rich had monumental vacation homes. It was a tourist attraction long before Acadia NP. The Millinocket Area already has a park, Baxter State Park. What makes you think that a National Park will attract enough visitors to support the businesses that it will supposedly create?

nzzkw

Not only is the National Park Service not responsible for the Maine coastal economy, it is responsible for its arrogantly pushing people around, including taking property by eminent domain. It comes from the unaccountable centralized power in Washington and its pressure group lobby, not “black helicopters”.

workingmansdem

Notice the donors are only interested in giving the land to the Feds, not the State of Maine. It’s easier for them and their allies in Big Envio to influence and control the Park Service than it is to push their agenda through Maine government, which – both Republican and Democrat – have more respect for individuals, communities, and traditional land uses.

VikingAPRNCNP

Actually federal control reinforces the idea of a national park and protection of resources from destructive development.

workingmansdem

Exactly. Because Mainers can’t be trusted to manage their own resources. Look at the mess they have made of Baxter State Park

Miaskovsky

Conservation bad! Land raping good! Wages too high! Trump ‘016!

nzzkw

Private property and the wood products industry are not “rape”. Quimby wants to rape other property owners and the private economy for a Federally imposed wilderness.

Miaskovsky

Federally imposed wilderness. Yes, that sounds like a total nightmare.

nzzkw

It is a nightmare. This is the 21st century. Quimby wants to “restore” the Maine woods to primitive pre-settlement conditions and she wants to impose it with the brute force of the Federal government. She wants to destroy private property rights, logging, and economic development. She is a 1960s “counter culture” promoter of the anti-industrial revolution.

Connie Hoffman

This is crazy talk….

Greenville

The idea that the ground in question is worthy of monument status is laughable. Sitting next to the magnificent Baxter it pales by comparison. It was not included or wanted as part of Baxter for a reason. If it was declared a national monument, Maine would have the embarrassing distinction of hosting the least substantive, unjustified, and unexplainable monument in the country.